The Barefoot Summer(8)

Waylon bit the inside of his lip to keep from grinning. So he could fluster the ice queen. That made the ten-minute wait worth every second.

“Which leads me to believe maybe you forgot about something else,” he said.

“It’s only for twenty-five thousand dollars, for God’s sake, and I had the premium set up for automatic payment. I figured if he died out there on the road it would pay for his funeral expenses. It’s damn sure not enough to kill him over,” she protested.

Her tone had gone an octave higher, and her body language said she was even more rattled. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Did you find out about those other two women before he died?”

Millie brought in a tray and set it on the desk. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s all for now,” Mrs. Kate Steele said.

Millie shut both doors behind her as she left. Waylon reached for coffee, and Kate picked up a glass of water, downing a third of it before setting it back down—in his books a sign that she was guilty as hell in some way and her mouth was dry from her lies.

Kate hit a couple of keys on her computer and brought up her calendar. “I told you all this before, but if you want the minute details, here they are. I arrived at work at eight thirty. I came in thirty minutes early to get my files in order for a meeting with the acquisitions department concerning buying out a smaller company. I went from my office to the conference room at nine o’clock. I did not have time in that five-minute ride in the elevator to dash down to the flower shop and kill my husband,” she said. “We were there until noon, hashing out the finer points of a buyout. Millie had lunch delivered, and we took a forty-five-minute break. I didn’t leave except for ten minutes in the ladies’ room, and there were at least two other women in there at the same time I was. We were back at the table at one o’clock and wrapped it all up by two. I went back to my office to make phone calls. I did not kill Conrad or have him assassinated.”

Waylon took out his notebook and wrote down the timeline as she talked. Most of the time folks got real antsy when he made notes in his book. It didn’t seem to affect Kate Steele as much as he wanted. She sat across the desk from him sipping her ice water as if he were no more than a gnat that she would squash with that glass paperweight any minute. He put his pen and notebook into his pocket and finished off his coffee.

“You got anything else you want to say this morning?” he asked.

“Only that if I’d wanted to kill Conrad, I would have done it years ago and I would not have hired someone to do my dirty work,” she said curtly.

“Don’t leave town. I might have more questions. Thanks for the coffee.” He rose up out of the chair slowly and settled his hat back on his head.

“I am leaving town next weekend, but I’ll still be in the state,” she said. “You have my cell phone, and before you accuse me of murder again, why don’t you pull your head out of your butt and do some real detective work? Who was he sending flowers to? They damn sure weren’t for me. And if there are three of us, there might be another wife in the wings. Find them and see if that person has a gun to match the bullets that killed dear old Conrad.”

Waylon nodded. “Good day, Mrs. Steele.”

“Think about what I said.” She raised her voice slightly as he left.

“Dammit!” he muttered as he pushed “L” on the elevator.

She’d brought up two good points that he was already investigating. Was she covering her own tracks by throwing him off course, and why was she taking a vacation right now? Hiding evidence?





CHAPTER THREE

On Tuesdays the trash man picked up the garbage, but since that particular day was a holiday, they wouldn’t get it until Wednesday. Still, Jamie was determined to get rid of anything in her house that had belonged to Conrad. She did leave one picture of Gracie with her father in her daughter’s room. Even though Conrad had been a son of a bitch, he was still her father.

Was it something in the genes? Jamie’s mother hadn’t had a lick of sense with her relationship, and Jamie had been the result. She twisted her black hair up the back of her head and held it with an oversize clamp, dragged two bags out to the curb, and returned for a third big black one that held their actual garbage for the week. It would be ready for the trash man when he came the next day, and it would damn sure be out of her house.

Her grandmother had suggested giving his things to a charity, but Jamie was a little superstitious. She sure didn’t want another man to put on one of Conrad’s shirts or even his socks and feel the urge to become a con artist. The trash truck rumbled down her street before she even made it back to the porch of the small three-bedroom house that she and Conrad had bought together the week after they’d married. They’d planned on at least two children—a boy and a girl was what Conrad wanted. Moving from a small one-bedroom apartment, she’d felt as if she had bought a mansion when she first moved in. Now it seemed small, because memories lurked in every corner and every damned one of them fueled the red-hot anger inside her.

She would sell the place and move into an apartment. There was no way she could make the mortgage payment, pay taxes and insurance, and keep up with all her other bills on her teacher’s salary. He might have been a bastard, but he did give her the money for the mortgage every month.

“Unless I can sell the cabin and put the money on the house.” She sat down on the porch, propped her elbows on her knees, and put her chin in her hands. “That has to be Gracie’s inheritance, since she is his oldest living blood kin. As her guardian, I could sell it and pay off most of this house. I’ll make a will leaving this property to her, which I would have done anyway.”